{"id":654,"date":"2015-04-13T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T13:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2015-04-13T09:00:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T13:00:29","slug":"whats-different-about-leading-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/whats-different-about-leading-women\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Different about Leading Women?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[A coach for a women\u2019s semiprofessional sports team recently called me to ask for advice about how to motivate her players to perform at a higher level. She complained that \u201ctheir female traits are holding them back.\u201d When I asked her what she meant by female traits, she said, \u201cThey want to play nice, chat, and be friends.\u201d The coach wanted to know how to get them to be a high-performing team, which to her meant \u201cjust focusing on the task\u201d of winning games rather than \u201cwasting time\u201d fostering good relationships.\nThis story is a good example of how leaders often need to use different approaches to motivate teams of women than those required with men, in organizations as well as on the sports field. One reason for these differences is what my research, the subject of my new book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_19?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=new%20rules%20for%20women%20revolutionizing&amp;sprefix=New+Rules+for+Women%2Cstripbooks%2C250\"><em>New Rules for Women<\/em><\/a>, shows\u2014that women often have different relationship expectations of their female colleagues than they do of males. I call these expectations women\u2019s friendship rules.\nWe begin to develop friendship rules at a very young age, but by the time we are adults our friendship rules have become unconscious. Men have friendship rules, too, but because of differences in our gender socialization, theirs are not the same. Women\u2019s friendship rules tend to be much more egalitarian and relational, while men\u2019s expectations, reflected in most workplace cultures as \u201cthe right way to be,\u201d are more transactional and hierarchical. Women expect female colleagues and team members to be friendly, to share personal information, and to be collaborative. In fact, the coach in our opening story seems to be reflecting men\u2019s friendship rules when she asks how to get the women to \u201cjust focus on the task\u201d of winning games.\nI told the coach she was asking the women to be men\u2014and they are not men\u2014which would not work. As their leader, her task is to help them build the strong relationships they need for effective teamwork <em>and<\/em> to be motivated to win. I also suggested that she was another factor in the motivation equation. Not only do our friendship rules create expectations of peers and colleagues, but my research shows that female subordinates often expect different leadership behaviors from their female managers or leaders as well, needing them to be more relational, too. They do not have this expectation of male leaders. This means the female coach may need to spend more time chatting and getting to know her team members than she\u2019s accustomed to motivate them.\nHere are five tips for leading women in the office and on the playing field:\n\n\n<ol>\n\t\n\n<li><strong>Create a shared vision, <\/strong>or picture, of a high-performing team. What is happening? How does it feel to be a team member? How are team members working together? Facilitate a conversation among the team members to help them create a shared vision of what it means to them to be a high-performing team.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li><strong>Make team agreements<\/strong>, or explicit friendship rules, about how team members will behave to support each other, be friendly, handle disagreements, compete, and have different roles and styles. We are not all the same, and we need to make our expectations clear to each other and find common ground about what to expect.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li><strong>Tend to relationships, <\/strong>and do not push hurt feelings or misunderstandings under the rug. Create regular spaces to clean the relational field, or take time to talk about interactions that have not gone well and create new agreements about how to handle them next time.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li><strong>Celebrate<\/strong> successful teamwork.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li><strong>Encourage friendships<\/strong>, but discourage cliques, for the good of the team.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ol>\n\n\nWomen\u2019s gender socialization means that for many women being team players and collaborating comes easily. We need to be intentional, though, about making our unconscious expectations of each other explicit so that we can both work hard as individuals to reach our individual potential and be authentic and caring as friends and teammates who maintain strong and supportive relationships. We <em>can<\/em> do both.\n&nbsp;]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[110,221,225,339,567,612],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-coaching","tag-friendship","tag-gender","tag-leadership","tag-teamwork","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}